


Compromised

by swizzlesticks



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Ethan is overprotective of the people he cares about, Found Family, Hurt, I'll be honest guys I have no idea what to tag this, Implied/Referenced Torture, after things go pretty goddamn bad for a while, and shit gets very real, and they're a big dumb family of superspies, but it'll turn out pretty much ok, everyone's a little in love with each other, it's just straight-up an explanation of why Brandt and Jane weren't in Fallout, takes place mostly right after the events of fallout
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:13:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swizzlesticks/pseuds/swizzlesticks
Summary: Brandt's undercover and his cover gets blown by August Walker. Unfortunately, the IMF has bigger concerns than rescuing missing agents. Until Ethan and his team catch wind of it, that is.





	1. New Enemies

**Author's Note:**

> Sarah, I blame you.

William Brandt had been in worse scrapes than this.

He told himself that, deliberately, as his feet pounded the stones of the twisting alleyways of the Old City. Whether it was true or not, he wasn’t sure.

He’d like to think someone had noticed him drop off the grid. He’d like to think someone was looking for him now, that he could count on extraction. But Brandt had been in deep cover until about an hour ago, so whoever was supposedly handling his mission right now wouldn’t necessarily have cause for concern yet. By the time they realized something was wrong…

Brandt calculated his odds of surviving this to be pretty low.

Gunshots rang out, sending small explosions of broken brick, clay, and stone showering down over Brandt’s head. He ducked as he ran, and took the next corner. Faces blurred past him-- music with a heavy beat coming from a boombox on a stoop, a group of young men sitting around a hookah, an old long-haired man who simply watched Brandt as he passed, shaking his head in disgust. The night was cool, a light breeze rising off the ocean and swirling through the city, and the moon overhead was full and bright. With the lights on the palm trees and the ancient buildings around him, it would have been a pleasant, even beautiful night, under almost any other circumstances.

Brandt ducked down another alleyway, took two quick turns, and let his back fall against the wall, sucking in gasps of air to his starved lungs so quickly that he fell into a coughing fit. He had to think-- he had to  _ think _ \-- his training was enough to help him avoid panic, but his mind buzzed with exhaustion, making it difficult to focus. He ran quickly through what he knew, trying to orient himself and plan his next step quickly; he was going to have to run again soon.

What he knew was this: someone at the IMF had sabotaged his mission. His cover had been blown by someone inside the organization. Brandt had a name, August Walker, but it wasn’t a name he recognized, and he had no resources here. He didn’t even have a way of contacting the IMF, not since his cover had been so completely blown. Walker must be somehow connected to the Syndicate: the whole reason Brandt was undercover was to help root out a cluster of ex-Syndicate members, now known as the Apostles, who had set up camp here. Ethan and the team might have taken down Lane, but the Syndicate itself still existed in the form of small, tight-knit groups of disavowed agents from various intelligence organizations. Brandt had taken Israel, Jane Carter had taken Malaysia. 

God,  _ Jane _ . Brandt felt a new, sudden spike of panic. If  _ his _ cover had been blown, he had to at least find a way to warn her, if the same hadn’t already happened to her--

Gunfire cut off his next thought. A searing pain ripped through his shoulder, and then Brandt was running again. He jumped down a small set of steps, stumbled, caught himself, and kept going. The pillars in the old Bazaar helped slightly with cover, and he sprinted across the open space. He could hear people shouting questioningly from windows in response to the sound of gunshots, and felt a familiar flash of guilt for bringing this kind of violence so close to people just trying to live their lives. 

“ _ Get inside _ !” He shouted in Arabic. “ _ Go, go _ !” He knew he was making things worse for himself, drawing attention, but for good measure he called out again in Hebrew. Many of these buildings were open in places bullets could easily enter-- stairways, windows-- if he could at least keep collateral damage from killing anyone--

Another bullet grazed his thigh, and Brandt fell at full speed, landing hard on the cobbled ground. He scrambled up, groaning, and tried to keep running, but he wouldn’t be able to make it far like this. He limped heavily, and his face twisted in pain whenever he put weight on his left leg.

A breeze touched his face, and it smelled like salt. Brandt changed direction and made for the sea. He’d seen some kids jumping from the sea wall about a month ago, laughing as they cannonballed a ridiculous distance down into the water. It was a long way down, and there were rocks, but Brandt thought he might be able to find the spot again. If he didn’t, he was probably a dead man.

In front of him, a man stepped out of an alley. Not a civilian. Brandt knew this man, Isak Smith. He led the group of disavowed agents Brandt had managed to infiltrate, and he was holding a pistol.

“William Brandt.” Isak spoke his name, and Brandt drew up short, panting. “Not so disavowed after all, it would seem.”

“Maybe the paperwork just hasn’t gone through yet?” Brandt shouldn’t bait this man, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. He found that his sense of humor was generally the last thing he lost to pain and panic-- good sense left him a little sooner.

Isak smirked. “You worked with Ethan Hunt.”

Brandt felt a thrill of fear. “What about it?” He challenged. 

Isak stepped closer, and Brandt took an involuntary step back, unable to keep from groaning as he put weight on his injured leg.

Isak grinned. “We’ve got some questions for you.” 

He raised his gun at Brandt’s chest, and fired.


	2. Old Friends

Ethan sat with his head in his hands at the table in the safehouse bedroom. Luther, Ilsa and Benji were asleep on the bed, sprawled out like exhausted cats, and Ethan couldn’t blame them. There had been little enough downtime since the events in Kashmir-- it was almost laughable that the first time any of them could sleep was when they were getting ready to take a new mission.

Honestly, none of them were ready, health-wise, to set out on a new mission. But the Apostles were an ongoing threat. Walker had been proof enough of their ability to wreak havoc. Ethan wasn’t willing to wait for another demonstration-- he wanted to start work taking them down. The IMF itself was currently in disarray, after the death of yet another secretary, but the team had been on board with Ethan’s plan to start taking out Apostle groups while waiting for the IMF to shake itself out. They had bigger worries than bureaucracy.

With a sigh, Ethan stood, going into the safehouse kitchen. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he may as well listen to the briefing. 

He pulled out the dummy phone that had all their known intel on the Apostles on it, and set it on the table in the corner. It projected the information to a screen over the kitchen table, and Ethan sat down to watch.

It was formatted like most IMF briefings. A little choppier, perhaps, a little less professional-looking, but someone had done a damn fine job of working up a mission brief with limited internal resources. Ethan strongly suspected Benji had had something to do with it, and glanced fondly through the open door to the bedroom to where Benji was deeply asleep, his head thrown back over Luther’s shin like it was a pillow, his mouth wide open.

With a small smirk, Ethan turned his attention back to the briefing. He didn’t stay smiling long.

_ Three days ago, Agent William Brandt, ex-chief analyst, was undercover on assignment, infiltrating a group of Apostles led by Isak Smith, a former M16 agent, when a new series of instructions were sent to Brandt by Agent August Walker. _

Ethan’s brow furrowed as pictures of Brandt and Walker were placed next to each other on the screen, imposed over a map of a small Israeli city.

_ Agent Walker, now deceased, was a confirmed member of the Apostles, working from inside the IMF at the time of the transmission. Upon receiving these new instructions from Walker, Brandt immediately ceased contact with the IMF. It is believed that Brandt may have been compromised, but as of this time, his exact location, status, and loyalties remain unknown. Agent Jane Carter, who was on assignment in Malaysia at the time, infiltrating a different group of Apostles, reports that she received a series of instructions from the IMF on the same day of Walker’s transmission to Brandt. Agent Carter’s analysis is that these instructions were encrypted using an outdated method, which could easily have been intercepted by the Apostles. Although Agent Carter was not compromised, as she successfully destroyed the transmission before it could be intercepted by the Apostles, she has been sent to rendez-vous with the group of Apostles Brandt was infiltrating, who have relocated to northwestern Maine. She is estimated to arrive in three hours. _

The screen zoomed in on a map of Maine, closing in on an area at least one hundred and fifty miles away from the nearest city, deep in an unbroken area of forest.

_ Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to recover the contents of the transmission sent by Agent Walker to Agents Carter and Brandt. You are also to extract Agent Brandt, if he is still alive, and to provide backup to Agent Carter. The group of Apostles led by Isak Smith is currently located in the backwoods of Baxter State Park. Their current mission is unknown, however they can be assumed to be well-prepared and dangerous, and any opportunity to neutralize them should be taken. _

Ethan focused on the seven faces on the screen. Isak Smith was a large, wiry man with a scar over his right eye. The other six were no doubt equally dangerous. As the brief wished him good luck and self-destructed, Ethan let his head fall back into his hands.

He’d wondered where Brandt and Jane were. He had worked for the IMF for a long time, he should be prepared by now to lose team members, but…

He looked through the open door to the bedroom again. Luther looked as peaceful in sleep as Ethan had ever seen him. Ilsa had tucked herself against the big man’s side, but one of her legs stuck over the edge of the bed, and her sock had slipped most of the way off her foot, so that it was at risk of falling off. Benji shifted slightly in his sleep, and smacked his lips, finally closing his mouth. And Ethan thought of Brandt and Jane.

Hunley hadn’t liked Brandt. That wasn’t a secret, and the feeling had been entirely mutual-- Brandt had professionally been able to look past the six months Hunley had spent trying to track down Ethan, six months of keeping Brandt under maddeningly close watch which Brandt had managed to circumvent anyway. Ethan didn’t know how many polygraphs Brandt had been forced to do every week, he hadn’t asked. He hadn’t asked how Brandt had managed to send him the occasional warning when Hunley’s men were closing in, or the occasional tidbit of information when he was on the run, either.

But on a personal level, Brandt couldn’t stand Hunley. Ethan didn’t think Hunley would intentionally send Brandt on a mission above his skill level, and he didn’t think Brandt would have taken on more than he thought he could handle. He was an analyst, and he didn’t half-ass things. He was no more self-sacrificial than the rest of them.

But Brandt hadn’t been a field agent in a long time. And infiltrating a paranoid group of disavowed agents--

Ethan realized abruptly that he’d clenched his hands into fists. His fingernails bit into his palms, and he released the tension in his hands, noting the crimson half-circles he’d left in his skin.

And then there was that. Ethan knew that his protective nature was not a good fit for this particular job, but he couldn’t help it. Brandt had been sabotaged by Walker. No one had heard from him for three days. He imagined that Isak Smith could do a lot of damage in three days. If Brandt was even still alive. And if he hadn’t been forced to give up Carter. She would be arriving in three hours; the briefing automatically updated times to keep them current at the time of viewing. 

Ethan stood abruptly, pushing the chair back with a scraping sound that woke all three of his team members. Ilsa blinked at him, her sleepy blue eyes startled, and Luther raised an eyebrow at Ethan as Benji bolted upright, clearly unsure where he was.

Ethan looked at the three of them, and his heart hurt. “Guys, pack up. We’ve got to move.”


	3. Prisoner's Dilemma

Jane hadn’t taken a mission in the backcountry for years, but it reminded her of her childhood. She’d grown up somewhat torn between her father, who wanted her to be refined, and sent her to all the best language tutors around, and her mother, who had been a hardcore backpacker and had insisted that Jane learn how to create a wilderness shelter by the time she was six. Martial arts had been Jane’s own interest, and she’d started it later, but none of that changed the fact that she’d spent nearly a year living in the woods when she was twelve, when her father was working too far away to be much influence.

So she was smiling when she stepped out of the Jeep. This was more her style than seducing playboys. Her worry for Brandt, her concern that she was walking into a trap, all tucked neatly behind her facade, and her comfort with her surroundings was what she built that facade on. It was easier to feign comfort when it wasn’t a complete fabrication.

“Happy about something?” Grism asked.

Jane’s smile faltered slightly. She didn’t like Grism. She would have been surprised if she’d liked any of the Apostles, but Grism she disliked more than most. Isak, so she understood, was sort of like Lane, who Jane had been briefed extensively on, but Grism seemed to her like a bizarro Ethan. Where Ethan took gambles to save lives, Grism took gambles for the thrill of it. Where Ethan cared deeply about his team, Grism couldn’t care less, and was disgusted when someone got themselves caught or killed. Ethan agonized over sacrifices he was forced to make in the field. Grism behaved as though he was playing a game of chess; the pieces themselves were disposable.

“It’s been a while since I was in woods like these.” She finally said. She didn’t exactly want to give Grism any more information about herself than she had to. He’d come with her from Malaysia, and knew too much already. “It’s good to be back.”

“Alright, Fern Gully.” He mocked her, and turned towards the ramshackle cabins. “Get the bag from the back.”

Jane nodded and did what he said. The bag held weapons, and Jane armed herself before bringing the rest. She followed Grism into the cabin, and was unsurprised to find it significantly more high-tech on the inside than it had looked from the outside. All seven Apostles were inside, down a short flight of stairs that led to a much larger underground area than just the tiny cabin. The walls were brushed steel, and Jane spotted an armory in the back. There was no sign of Brandt, and her stomach clenched.

“Isak, Jane Carter. Jane, Isak.” Grism waved vaguely between them before turning his attention back to another Apostle he’d started a conversation with. Isak stepped forward, offering Jane a hand to shake, and she took it without flinching.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Jane.” Isak said quietly. Jane offered him a bland smile, pushing down the spike of fear his words elicited.  _ Did Brandt…? _

“Oh?” She asked.

“Yes, Tracy Vanesh speaks very highly of you.” Isak watched her closely and Jane didn’t relax, not wanting him to see her react. Vanesh led the Apostles in Malaysia. “I understand you joined recently. From IMF?”

Jane nodded. 

“An unusual organization to quit.” He said quietly.

Jane shrugged. “Has any one of us quit conventionally?”

He smiled slightly. “No, I suppose not. I merely ask because we had a new recruit from IMF. It didn’t work out.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “Anyone I know?”

“Depends.” Isak was still watching her closely. “I’ll show you.”

Jane saw Grism watching her out of the corner of his eye. All the Apostles were. She didn’t let her reaction show on her face, and instead looked curiously at Isak. “Alright.”

Isak led her to a smooth door at the back of the room. It looked so much like the wall that Jane hadn’t seen it when she came in. She watched Isak open it: it required a retinal scan, and Jane cursed inwardly. If she had to guess, she imagined that Isak was the only Apostle who could open it.

Through the door, another set of stairs led downwards, and Jane followed Isak with the full knowledge that she was likely walking into a trap. Even if Brandt hadn’t given her up, his being compromised had turned suspicion onto her. She wasn’t sure when Ethan and the rest of the team would be showing up, but she hoped it would be soon.

At the bottom of the stairs was a hallway. They took a left, and a hundred feet down the hall, Isak completed another retinal scan. Another smooth door at the end of the hallway slid open, and there was Brandt.

He was sitting slumped against the wall, and his short hair was spiky with blood. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and Jane could hear the labored sound of his breathing from where she stood. There was too much blood. Most of it was dry, and Jane could see bandages around his arm, shoulder, and left leg. That was both a good sign and wasn’t: it meant they wanted him alive, which meant they’d been torturing him for information. But the very fact that he remained alive now meant that they wanted more from him.

He lifted his head at the sound of the opening door, and his good eye looked between her and Isak.

“You bring me a friend, Isak?” He asked. His voice was weak, and Jane’s heart twisted. He was putting on a brave front for her, but she didn’t have to be a medical expert to tell how much pain he was in. 

“He’s got a smart mouth.” Isak said dryly. “Know him?”

Brandt’s blue eye fixed on Jane’s, and she blinked once. 

“I’ve met him. William Brandt. I worked on a mission with him.”

“He’s a right bastard.” Isak regarded Brandt cooly. Brandt was still watching them, gauging the situation with a tense, exhausted expression. “Burned right through our stock of truth serum like it barely touched him. I don’t know how he does it, I think he must have tampered with the stuff before we caught him.”

_ Good thinking, Brandt. _ Jane thought. 

“Part of what we did get out of him,” Isak continued, “was that he worked with Ethan Hunt. On the same mission you did.”

Jane looked at him. He’d been testing her when he asked if she knew Brandt; he already knew she did. She decided not to comment on it. “You want Hunt?”

Isak nodded slowly. “Very much so. You know what happened in Kashmir.”

“I heard.”

Isak turned his attention back to Brandt. “Intel shows that Hunt isn’t willing to sacrifice a team member for the mission. He took a great many risks to rescue Agent Benji Dunn when Lane kidnapped him. And now we have two members of his team.”

Jane looked at him quickly, and he gave her a small smile. 

“One working for us, and one captive.” He surveyed her. “I assume, any intel Agent Brandt wasn’t kind enough to share with us about Hunt, you can fill in?”

Across the room, Brandt spat on the floor, but he didn’t speak. Jane ignored him and nodded, never looking away from Isak’s eyes, which were a dangerous pale blue.

“I can do that.”


	4. Under Pressure

Jane was here.  _ Jane _ was here. 

Brandt’s head swam. He didn’t think he had given her up, but he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t quite sure of anything that had happened when he was on the truth serum-- sure he’d sabotaged it, but there were still drugs in there, and his memory of the past few days was foggy at best. Brandt wouldn’t consider that a bad thing-- torture was hard enough to get through without having to remember it afterwards-- except that he wasn’t sure what he’d told them.

He looked down at his hands. It was deathly quiet in his cell, except for the sound of his own breathing. He knew he had broken ribs. He thought maybe one of his lungs was damaged. In either case, each breath brought a new stab of pain through his chest, making it impossible to sleep or relax except for when he periodically passed out. And he couldn’t pass out now. Jane was here.

In some sick way, he supposed that was a good thing. Someone knew where he was. He hadn’t been sure before. It had been days. The IMF didn’t let agents go missing for days. He didn’t know what had happened. What he did know is that a few days ago, Isak had burst into his cell, enraged. Brandt had surmised from the man’s furious raving, interspersed by violence, that Ethan had managed to kill both Lane and the mysterious August Walker. Brandt had thought Isak would kill him. Being killed for something like that wouldn’t have been so bad. Brandt had forced himself to think so, anyway, as endless blows fell on him, as red pain choked his breath and darkened his vision, and two other Apostles had finally pulled Isak away.

Then there had been silence. Brandt hadn’t died after all. They had left him alive. For a little over a day, he guessed, although he wasn’t sure, no one had even come down here.

And now Jane was here.

Brandt let his head droop. He needed to think of a way out of here. Now that Jane knew, Ethan would come for them. Brandt was sure of that, and Isak wanted to kill Ethan. Brandt wasn’t an idiot. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to escape, not on his own. And hopefully they wouldn’t hurt Jane, but they were watching her too closely for her to come to his aid. He just had to think of a way to become a wrench in Isak’s plans by himself. There must be something he could do to help Ethan and the others.

He closed his eyes, tried not to feel anything, and thought.

 

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

 

It had taken them too long to get here. Ethan had hoped to get here just a few hours after Jane, but instead it had taken them nearly an extra day, between the flight and the drive. And now they had to maneuver this forest, and secret agents they might be, but they were not cut out for this. The trees were crushingly close to each other, and bristly with thin bare branches that crackled and snapped as they forced their way through the dry woods.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that this was a trap, but there were few ways to circumvent that. Their advantages lay only in that the Apostles wouldn’t know exactly which agents were coming, and what equipment to expect. But they were outnumbered: there were at least seven Apostles, and they had at least one hostage, maybe two. And as Benji kept pointing out, they had set themselves at the end of a rabbithole; it would be nearly impossible to get close without them knowing.

“I’m just saying--” Benji winced as a small branch from a tree poked him hard in the temple before snapping. “All they would have to do is attach cameras to these trees, and set up a motion trigger. They send the pictures back to a laptop in their little shack, and boom, the whole thing is blown.”

“If it  _ is _ a little shack.” Luther pointed out. “They’re all agents like us, you don’t think they have some kind of cache back here? Why else would they come all the way up here?”

“Can we focus?” Ethan asked. He glanced at Ilsa, who seemed to be managing the woods better than the other two. She was looking ahead, but her gaze was distant. Ethan appreciated her coming along on this; she hadn’t even met Jane and Brandt, and she wasn’t even IMF. But she didn’t seem inclined to part ways with the team, and so she had come along. And it was a good thing, because she knew more about how the Apostles worked than any of them.

“What do you think?” He finally asked her.

She glanced at him, looking somewhat surprised to be asked. There were broken twigs in her hair. “I think…” She hesitated. “I think that they want you to think your friend is alive.”

“Do you think he is? That either of them are?” Ethan knew Benji and Luther were watching him now, by the way they’d fallen silent, but he kept watching Ilsa. 

Ilsa looked uncomfortable, and glanced ahead into the woods again. “Isak Smith was a protege of Lane’s. He hates you almost as much as his mentor did.”

“And?” Ethan pressed, and she finally met his eyes.

“I think it will depend on what he thinks will hurt you more.” She said finally.

Behind Ethan, Benji made a small sound of surprise. “How can he hate us that much? I mean, he hasn’t even met us.”

Ilsa shrugged. “You killed Lane. And you stopped him. If Isak knows what he has, he will use it against you. And he’s too smart not to know what he has.”

Luther sighed. “So we need a plan.”

Ilsa nodded, not looking away from Ethan’s eyes.

“Do you have one?” Ethan asked quietly, and a very tiny smile touched the side of her mouth.

“I do.”


End file.
